Pirate movies have always been bad. POTC changed that and made them icons of freedom, nearly as known as Harley-Davidson
Being a great fan of the movies I thought I’d give this game a try and see how it was. During the first level I wondered if I should play any further, it was boring since it was a practice level. And since the previous game got a lot of bad reviews it got me really worried about my money. I did play further though and I was very pleasantly surprised. The game actually does feature a lot more then simply pressing the same button the whole time, or jumping over the same things over and over. I play platformers on hard and I still haven’t finished this after a week of playing. I keep going back over levels I have already played. Why? Cause it’s fun! You have to time your jumps and helping-weapons really well and defeating three enemies at the same time can be pretty tricky. First thing that crossed my mind after I got through the first level was that they actually made a really good platformer and then put the whole POTC atmosphere to it. Almost like it’s not about pirates at all, just a really fun game, and on top of that it has pirates. And come on, who doesn’t like pirates? Some levels have some really well hidden secrets that aren’t so easy to get to and you can replay any level you have already played to find those secrets. The music can be really, really frustrating in some levels. It just loops and loops without any change. But in most levels your too busy timing your jumps and helping-weapons that you don’t even notice, and at those times the music actually does add to the overall experience, how crazy that may sound.
Ah, the graphics. Well, let’s just say there have been worse games on the DS. It doesn’t show the true power of the DS, but the levels are enriched with details and I must say that I rather have it like this then a game with great graphics that doesn’t move flawlessly. All in all the graphics are good, just not great.
Levels are really big and if you play on easy or normal there are plenty of checkpoints. When you play on hard there are of course a lot less checkpoints, and might leave you feeling like there is too little. But hey, that’s why they call it hard, isn’t it?
The mini-games are fun as well. Opening chests by moving the stylus in between rows of picks can take you a few tries, but it isn’t all that hard on the whole. The good thing about those chests is that they aren’t overdone: they don’t appear too much so they won’t get you frustrated over them. The duelling system is well thought out and makes it easy for both left-handed and right-handed people to play. The voice acting done for duels is a little boring, the same thing is being said over and over. ‘There is no place left for you to cower!’ and ‘I’m being keelhauled!’ doesn’t sound very intelligent anymore after the third time of hearing it.
But the replay value is great since you can replay any level you have played before. Much like Lego Star Wars II, only without the glitches and blasters.
So my conclusion is that if your looking for a nice platformer that is action packed and has nice little minigames to it, then go for this game. This will give you a good experience in the story mode and then there is a lot of other maps to be found that lead to other islands, thus more levels. It truly is a wonderful game.